Saturday August 4, 2012
continued………..
My College Years
Buena Vista College
I spent a lot of waking hours last night trying to remember as much as I could about my junior and senior year at Buena Vista.
The one thing I remember was that in order for me to graduate in four years I would need to carry 22 credit hours my senior year. This was normally an impossible task. The normal maximum number of credit hours taken was 16. I read the material I had already written in my “running story” that I have been drawing my Blog articles from and decided I would edit that material to include some things I have remembered.
My Junior year at BV
After transferring to BV from the University of South Dakota I found that most of my credits would transfer and I only had to pick up the three required courses I would need for graduation plus the courses for my Business Management major.
Those 3 courses were; science, math and a foreign language. I had taken all the English, history and speech I needed. I had over 50 hours of Art that I also took my first two years.
I remember visiting with Mr. Brown my men’s academic counselor about my situation and I recall that he informed me that he told me that I would have to change my declared major from Art to something BV offered since the Art degree was not yet available. He told me that since I already had over 50 hours of Art I might be able to receive a double major since I had so many Art class hours.
After reviewing the situation I decided on Business Management would be my major and Mr. Brown told me that by the time I graduated in 1963 the Art hours I had would qualify me for a double major in Graphic Arts and Business Management. This I liked very much.
Selecting the classes
to Qualify me for my Graduation
The Math Requirement (3 hours)
To get qualified for my math requirement I discovered that BV offered a General Math course that covered the basic math subjects like basic algebra, geometry and the other basic areas of math. It was interesting to me that about every month they would offer a test to see if a student could qualify to “pass out “ of the General Math course. I was offered to take the test at the very beginning but decided I needed the review and turn down taking the test at the beginning. I did, however, take the test 3 months later and passed out of the class fulfilling my math requirement.
The Science Requirement (6 hours)
For my science requirement I chose a 3 hour class in General Physical Science and the second semester science 3 hour class in Geology. The instructor was named Mr. Boone and was a very nice man. He was obsessed with the world situation and Russia’s threat to attack us with atomic bombs. He told us that we need to encourage our parents and friend to build bomb shelters in preparation for a possible attack. He told us that he had built a bomb shelter on his property and took us to see it one day. Sure enough it was a cement bomb shelter with all the things needed to sustain he and his family in the event of a atomic bomb attack.
Anyway I enjoyed his science class and passed both semester with flying colors completing the 6 hour requirement for science.
Foreign Language Requirement (6 hours)
I discovered that I could take a course in Spanish offered by a very nice Spanish teacher, Mr., Anthony Stone. Mr. Stone was from Madrid, Spain originally and spoke the Castilian form of Spanish which was a little different that the Mexican Spanish spoken by most Spanish speaking student from Mexico that attended BV.
His technique of teach was different that I had ever experienced before. He told us that within 2 weeks we would be speaking only Spanish in class with a little English to aid us in understanding. I was amazed but it was basically true, We spent the first few classes learning Spanish vocabulary. Then he had us put our chairs in a circle facing each other and began communicating with each other. He would ask us simple questions in English and guide us through the answers in Spanish. Then visa-versa, he would ask in English and with help at first we answered in Spanish. I t wasn’t long and we were doing as he told us we would mostly be communicating in Spanish. I learned Spanish very well in those 2 semesters.
Other classes I took my Junior year. As I mentioned at the beginning of this Blog, I needed to pick up a new major in Business Management. I took Beginning Accounting for two semesters, Economics and Money and Banking.
My Accounting instructor was from Cuba and his Spanish/English was very difficult to understand at times. His name was Felix Cruz and he did give me a lot of assistance.
Back then we had no computers so it was all done the long way…..writing it all out on accounting paper. I managed to squeeze through with a 2.3 grade point.
Economics was taught by Mr. Cripe. It was very difficult for me because it required a lot of reading which I was very slow at doing. A managed a 2. GPA and I also took a Sociology class along with the Money and Banking class. Somewhere along the line I also took a tax accounting and a second year of basic accounting.
All those business classes were a struggle but I managed to get through them. I also wrote for the college newspaper (the”Tack”) and was art editor for the BV annual yearbook (the “Log”).
In order to help pay my last year of college I decided to apply for a journalism scholarship offered at the end of my junior year. It was a small miracle and to my surprise I qualified and was presented along with a fellow classmate, Sally Shevel, a co-editorship scholarship.
Sally and I agreed that she would be the story writing editor and I would be the managing business editor. We had fun and I remember that we published a copy of (the Tack) each month.
Back then the type was set with lead type at the local newspaper office and we would go down and proofread the galleys of type before the printing was accomplished.
Somewhere alone the line we published an April Fools edition that took the campus by storm. That must have happened our senior year. We placed un-true stories and crazy photographs in the edition. We did not get any approval before we published it. The president of the college, Dr. Wayne Halverson called me into his office and gave me a verbal chewing out for not getting permission to write some of the “April Fools” articles.
I checked and the last time I knew there was an archived copy of that edition stored away somewhere in the files of the Past “Tack” issues.
This is pretty much as much as I could remember about my junior year at BV. I will post this now and finish with my senior year in the next Blog.
